Firefighters, military personnel, truckdrivers, and other workers sometimes use headsets connected to two-way radios. The headsets include earphones at the wearer's ears and a microphone in front of his or her face, all of which are held by a resilient headband to the wearer's head. Normally, the wearer hears incoming messages at the earphones. When he wishes to talk, he operates a manually-operable switch that switches the radio from a receive mode to a transmit mode, and talks into a microphone. Commonly available headsets use a switch near one of the headphones, which is operated by the wearer raising his hand to the earphone, finding the push button, and depressing it. The need to use the wearer's hand to find the switch and depress it is undesirable in many applications, because it may require the wearer to take one hand off equipment and it may require some groping to find the switch.
The prior art has recognized the need for headset switches or the like that do not require operation by the hand of the wearer. U.S. Pat. No. 3,586,798 by Holmes describes a microphone with a push-to-talk switch that is operated by downward pivoting of the wearer's chin against a lever that depresses a push button lying on his chest. This arrangement requires a switch mechanism on the person's chest, which makes it unsuitable for a headset assembly that uses a simple band to hold the earphones and microphone to the wearer's head. U.S. Pat. No. 3,229,059 by Beatty shows a chin-operated switch, that may be used by a person who is otherwise paralyzed. This also has the disadvantage that it would make a simple headset assembly bulky. U.S. Pat. No. 2,541,042 by Curtis shows a transceiver with an underarm switch operated by squeezing the arm against the side of the body. This arrangement is also unsuitable for a compact headset assembly. A compact headset assembly with a push-to-talk type switch that could be operated without use of the arms, or even movement of the head, and yet which was of simple and economical construction and which could be operated in a simple manner while the headset was mounted on the wearer's head, would be of considerable value.